Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca SolnitIn just 25 words, Rebecca gave “hope” a new identity, introduced a new purpose for it, and caused us to imagine the beginning of a new adventure. She supplied the words, but we created the movie in our minds.Persuaders don’t tell you the truth; they lead you to it and let you discover it for yourself. Rebecca Solnit is a talented persuader, a gifted teacher, and a wonderful storyteller. She made us see hope as a powerful tool that can smash down barriers and give us access to things we desire.We broke down the door that kept us out, so now we are… where?That is up to you. What do you hope for?# # # #I will now reveal – bit by bit – my true purpose in writing these things to you:“Astral projection is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of a soul called an ‘astral body’ that is separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it throughout the universe.” – WIKIPEDIA“That sounds a bit woo-woo, so I’m out.”“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen… Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” – Hebrews 11:1-3, in the Bible“That sounds religious, so I’m out.”“Every morning, Tony Robbins engages in a 10-minute priming exercise to channel his energy and create the ideal conditions for a fulfilling day. By taking charge of his mindset and emotions, he cultivates a positive state, which greatly increases the odds that he will experience happiness, success and fulfillment throughout his day.” – tonyrobbins.com“That sounds like mind-over-matter, so I’m out.”“Don’t worry. Be happy.” – Bobby McFerrin“Wishful thinking is self-delusion, so I’m out.”“Stay focused, ignore the distractions, and you will accomplish your goals much faster.” – Joel Osteen“Every elementary school teacher has said that to every little kid in America for the past 100 years. I’m out.”“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca SolnitEach of us has hope. We cling to it. Rebecca told us precisely what all those other people were trying to tell us, but she chose the word “hope” instead of “visualize,” “focus,” “priming exercise,” “faith,” “Astral projection” or “The Law of Attraction,” because each of those other words and phrases have associations and connotations that might push us away from the truth.What is the truth?This is the truth: You imagine action before you take it. You see yourself do it before you do it. No person has ever cheated on their life partner without first imagining it in their mind, and no person has ever created anything marvelous or good without first seeing it in their mind. And no person has ever sold anything without first causing the customer to imagine buying it.The job of an ad is to cause people to imagine taking an action.I asked earlier, “What do you hope for?”Let me ask it differently, “What action do you want your customer to take?”Do what Rebecca Solnit did. Begin with something familiar; something that you and your customer agree on. Then build a bridge from that point of agreement to where you want them to go.You cannot take your customer where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are.What does your customer already believe in? Start with that.Roy H. Williams

My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it.The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab centers have booked journeys for people as well. Thirty-five million in all.Each trip through time begins with a series of words.My friend Don is a storyteller.Stories of the past help us to know who we are.Stories of the future help us to see who we can become.Stories are more effective than facts for changing beliefs and behaviors. Facts cause us to put our shields up and become skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard.With these thoughts in mind, Don invented “interactive journals,” booklets that allow people in crisis to revisit their past and imagine a better future. Each reader of an interactive journal becomes the co-creator of two stories. (1.) the story of how they got into this mess, and (2.) the story of a brighter tomorrow.We imagine every action before we take it. If we want to change our behaviors, we need only to imagine different actions than the ones we have imagined in the past.Stories are portals of escape into alternate realities.An examination of the brain of any mammal will let us know its superpower. Monkeys can swing artfully through trees, not because their bodies are different, but because more than half their brain mass is devoted to depth perception, color differentiation, and guided grasping.According to Professor Steven Pinker of MIT and Harvard,“The human brain, too, tells a story. Our brains are about three times too big for a generic monkey or ape of our size. The major lobes and patches of the brain are different as well. The olfactory bulbs, which underlie the sense of smell, have shriveled to one third of the expected primate size (already puny by mammalian standards), and the main cortical areas for vision have shrunk proportionally as well…while the areas for hearing, especially for understanding speech, have grown…to twice what a primate our size should have.”The superpower of we humans is our unique ability to attach complex meanings to sounds.Every word in the English language is composed of just 44 sounds called phonemes. We arrange these into clusters called words which we string together in rapid succession so that others can see in their minds what we see in ours.In the first chapter of Genesis, God says, “Let there be this” and “Let there be that” for 25 verses, and then in verse 26 he says, “Let us make mankind in our own image.”According to that ancient story, God spoke the world into existence and then gave you and me the power to do the same. When you, as a storyteller, speak a world into existence in the hearts and minds of your listeners, you are doing the work of God.Don Kuhl has spent the past 30 years unleashing the power of storytelling to help 35 million people find peace, hope, and happiness, and now he has written a book for you and me. It will be published early next year.I’ll make sure you know when it’s available.Roy H. Williams

Creativity is counterintuitive. You hate it when you are handcuffed and expected to do your best work, but the secret of doing your best work is to be handcuffed. Creative restraints bring out the best in you.When Sean Jones sold controlling interest in Spence Diamonds a number of years ago, I left that company when he did, just as I left when Dewey Jenkins sold his company two weeks ago.My relationship is always with the business owner, never with the company. Here’s why: a brand without trust is just a product, and a product can be replaced. To become truly trusted, you have to forge a bond with the customer.People don’t bond with corporations. People bond with people.I am a better-than-average ad writer,(1.) because I cheat.(2.) because I don’t fight the handcuffs.This is how I cheat:(1.) I never work with a person unless I really enjoy talking with them. My relationship with that person is the source of my inspiration. How can I make the world love and trust someone if I don’t love and trust them myself?(2.) My new friend must have unconditional authority to say “absolutely yes” without having to check with someone else. Anything with two heads is a monster.(3.) Their company must be operationally excellent. Great ads won’t grow a broken business.(4.) The product or service they sell must have a solid profit margin and a long purchase cycle. A short profit margin is the father, and a short purchase cycle is the mother, of every twitchy little bastard that has ever been born.I hit home runs because I never swing at a pitch that is not in my sweet spot. Ad writing isn’t like baseball. A baseball batter gets to look at only 6 pitches – 2 strikes and 4 balls – before they have to leave the batter’s box. But the independent ad writer doesn’t face a pitch count. You can wait for the perfect opportunity that is in the center of your happy little sweet spot.The crack of the bat shatters the crystal silence as the adrenaline pumps the crowd screaming to their feet the ball arcs through space toward a little boy in the seventh row who has been waiting patiently all day with his baseball glove.Your sweet spot may be different than mine. This just means you have a different superpower.The secret of success is to know your superpower.I promise you have one. It doesn’t matter that you’re not an ad writer, you have a superpower! If you don’t know what it is, ask the people who know you best.So now you know how I cheat.I mentioned a second thing that makes me a better-than-average ad writer: I don’t fight the handcuffs. Yes, I scream at the handcuffs, I mourn the day they were born and I suggest to the handcuffs that they do things that are not anatomically feasible, but then I calm down and pretend they are cuff links and that I am the kind of guy who wears cuff links.A few months ago Sean Jones asked me to meet the new CEO of Spence Diamonds. His name is Callum Beveridge. Callum flew to Austin and we spent a couple of days together and I really like him. When he asked me if I could bring back the magic of the old Spence Diamonds radio campaign. I told him that it would be impossible because Sean Jones was no longer available as a voice actor. Any attempt to bring that campaign back to life without its principal character would be like trying to swim the English Channel wearing handcuffs. It would impossible.Callum reminds me of Dewey Jenkins. Both of them, when I said, “It’s impossible,” asked me the same innocent question: “Well, if it could be done and you were going to do it, how would you go about it?”“Well, Callum, the only way would be to use Sean Jones as a character that never appears on-stage. Conversations with him would always have to take place off-stage. The first time I saw this done was when I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Asimov brings you time and again to the edge of a climactic moment, then you turn the page and that event is now in the past. All the action took place off-stage! We saw a similar thing in that TV series with Tom Selleck, Magnum P.I. Magnum was the head of security at an estate owned by Robin Masters, whom we never once saw or even heard speak, so Magnum gets his instructions from the never-seen Robin Masters through Higgins, the butler. Hey Callum! We should do that! Sean Jones will be the never-seen Robin Masters, you’ll be Magnum, and Higgins will be my partner Michael Torbay! And we’ll bring back the old Spence scream of joy, but with a twist! This is going to be awesome!”Callum said, “Okay, let’s do that.”It worked like magic when Isaac Asimov did it in his books.It worked like magic when Magnum P.I. did it on TV.And it’s working like magic on the radio in Canada.MICHAEL:  Do you remember Sean Jones? [SFX – Scream of joy]I am his executive assistant. My name is Michael.CALLUM: And I’m Callum Bev-MICHAEL: [Cutting him off]   Not yet, Callum. I’ll tell you when.CALLUM:  [Big, Audible Sigh]MICHAEL:  If you have been wondering what Sean Jones has been doing ­–and you probably haven’t – he has been searching theentire world for the perfect person to run Spence Diamonds.CALLUM: Do I talk now Michael?MICHAEL: [aside] Not yet, Callum. I’ll tell you when.[speaking again to the audience] And we finally found the perfect person… in Scotland.CALLUM:  Now?MICHAEL: Yes. And be sure to sound Scottish.CALLUM:  I have some questions for Mr. Jones.MICHAEL:  Okay, Callum. What is your first question?CALLUM:  I have noticed that our diamonds at Spence shine brighterand have more sparkle than other diamonds. Why is that? I need to understand.MICHAEL:  Callum, that is an excellent question and I will get back to youwith a detailed answer from Mr. Jones. In the meantime, I need you to practice something.CALLUM:  Okay, what is it?MICHAEL: [Michael does a good imitation of the Spence Scream of Joy.] Now you do it.CALLUM:  [Callum does his best to imitate what Michael has done.]MICHAEL:   You keep practicing that, and I’ll get back to you.LOCATION TAG – DEVIN:  Spence [Devin does his best Scream of Joy, then adds the location.]Like I said, “I cheat.”Roy H. Williams

When Pennie and I were preparing to move away from the town of our childhood, I told my friend Phil that I felt I was holding onto the end of a rope in the half-light of limbo, and I had no idea where the other end of the rope was tied. I have never forgotten what he said.“This is your time in the elevator. You are between two worlds. You are leaving behind the way it has been, but you have not yet arrived at the way it will be. You don’t know if you are going to a higher place or a lower one. The only thing you know for sure is that when those elevator doors open, you will be surrounded by new faces, new spaces, and new places; everything will be different. A new chapter in your life will begin and you will have to figure everything out. But that part is easy. The hard part is being in the elevator. The hard part is not knowing.”Your going-away party is over; your friends are gone. A new opportunity and a new town await you, but you are not yet there. You are in the elevator. It is awkward and filled with uncertainty. You want those doors to open so you can face what awaits.You remember that feeling, don’t you?Phil’s counsel about the elevator came from a book he had read. He said the book was called Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, by Gail Sheehy. It was published in 1976.When Phil Johnson died, he left me his favorite tie. It is blazoned with shelves of beautiful books from top to bottom. He wore it often.Phil also left me his library of more than 3,000 books, a portion of which now fill the shelves in the reading room of the Enchanted Emporium in the Village of La Mancha, just 200 yards south of the Tower at Wizard Academy.The next time you’re on campus, wander over to the Enchanted Emporium and plop yourself down in one of the soft, red leather reading chairs with a glass of wine and a book from Phil’s library.When you see the titles of the books he read, you will know the man.I think you will enjoy having met him.Roy H. Williams

“Unless your goal is to go backwards, you cannot make progress while staring into the rear-view mirror.”An opening statement like that would usually indicate a motivational message, but I’m doing something different today. I’m not backing up and I’m not moving forward. I’m pausing to look at the long road behind me and the short road ahead.A reflective mood requires a rear-view mirror.I’ve spent an hour on the phone each Friday morning for the past 10 years with my friend Dewey Jenkins. We won’t be doing that anymore. Dewey was offered so much money for his company that it made no sense to keep it.At the top of this page is a photo I snapped as Dewey walked onto the second-story porch of the historic Duke Mansion in Charlotte a few years ago. I had been sitting out there admiring the view when he walked in with his characteristic grin. *Click*We had wrapped up the famous “Mr. Jenkins and Bobby” campaign by giving Bobby $100,000 so that he could pursue his dream of becoming an actor in Hollywood. Now we had to accelerate our momentum and elevate our trajectory in a new and different way. Dewey and Jonathan and Casey and I were building a rocket ship while we were flying it.The new campaign, “Mr. Jenkins Told Me…”, has been even more successful than “Mr. Jenkins and Bobby.” Mr. Jenkins is still the center of attention even though he is now off-stage. The values and beliefs of his company are reflected by the things his employees remember him saying. “Mr. Jenkins Told Me…”The people of that company will be recalling things Mr. Jenkins told them for generations to come. (Indy put some of those TV ads in the rabbit hole for you.)I left the company when Dewey left, but Jonathan and Casey will doubtless reach the stars.Dewey Jenkins called me the morning after he closed the sale of his company.Mr. Jenkins told me, “It was June 23, 2000, when I heard you speak at the Airtime 500 Conference in St. Louis. I bought your first two books for $20 each and they took me to $20,000,000 a year. And then I came to see you in 2011 and we began this grand adventure…”And a grand adventure it has been.# # # #I closed my computer and went to bed after I wrote that sentence. Three days have passed and a lot has happened.Two more of my close friends have sold their companies, bringing the collective sales price for all three companies to considerably more than one billion dollars.Pennie tells me I must write to you next week about, “Your Time in the Elevator.”It is a story that began 37 years ago.I look forward to writing it.Roy H. Williams

King Edward of England inherited control of Gascony in France from his mother, Eleanor of Provence, a French noble. But when the 27-year-old King of France decided in 1295 not to let the King of England control part of his country, Edward asked his English nobles to raise an army so that he could regain control of his real estate on the other side of the water.His nobles said, “Edward, Gascony doesn’t really belong to the nation of England; its revenues belong to you, personally. So we’re out. You need to deal with that on your own.”A con man who wants your money will present you with a phony opportunity. But a con man who wants your vote will present you with a phony emergency.Having thus been rebuffed by the Earls of England, Edward summoned a vast assembly of barons and bishops, knights and burgesses, men of the shires, and representatives of towns and cities, and told them their nation was in danger. He said,“The King of France, not satisfied with the treacherous invasion of Gascony, has prepared a mighty fleet and army for the purpose of invading England and wiping the English tongue from the face of the earth.” 1It was complete bullshit, but it worked.Alarmed, outraged, and afraid, the people of England gave lying King Edward the army he needed to invade France and fight for his real estate. And thus the fuse was lit that would later explode as The Hundred Years War.Edward’s lie cost the lives of tens of thousands of English husbands, sons, and fathers.Fifty years later, Edward II told that same lie to a new generation of English husbands, sons, and Dads. In 1345, he began spreading propaganda throughout England that the French were spies and aggressors whose only goal was to invade England and convert the population to French speakers. He got the people of England so worked up that when they got to France in 1347, “they tore it to pieces like a pack of distempered dogs. The army marched through the countryside, slaughtering and brutalizing as it went.” 2The war that Edward II started that day lasted 116 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 4 days, and resulted in more than 3,000,000 innocent people dying violently in France. In the end, the French won. The English lost all of their possessions in France except for the city of Calais, which they held until 1558.Fifty years apart, two different kings told the same lie to create a national emergency. And both times, it worked.And it still works today.Roy H. Williams

On a Rainy Autumn Day…October 18, 2021ListenAHis father called him Bunny because he was born on Easter Sunday.Bunny’s younger brother got a scholarship to Harvard.I’ve had both of Bunny’s phone numbers memorized for the past 48 years and I mention his name at least once a week. “Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis” has been a private joke between the Princess and me since we were 17 years old.I spent my Oklahoma weekends helping Loren load and unload the mountain of antique furniture he would buy at auction.Loren infected me with an addiction for auction browsing that has never left me.At the end of each auction, he and I would load 5 times more furniture than could possibly fit into – and on top of – his 1960 Ford Station Wagon. It became a point of honor that we never had to make a second trip. Loren was a legend. He and I could have hauled the entire contents of the average 3-bedroom home, including all major appliances, in just one load.Pennie witnessed Loren work his magic more than once, so when she and I go to Costco or Home Depot or a plant nursery or an auction and buy far more than we can possibly pack into her little SUV, she will always look at me and say, “Do you think we can get it all home?”I smile and say, “Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis.”I always get it home in just one load. Always. We may look like the Beverly Hillbillies as we roll down the road, but I graduated magna cum laude from the Loren L. Lewis School of Hauling, where our school motto is, “Of course we can get it in just one load. Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis.”When I was 15, Loren was 30. Anyone who saw us together would assume he was my older brother or my very young uncle.Loren taught me how to rebuild an automobile engine. Loren drove me to the emergency room when I nearly sliced off my forefinger while trying to shave down the edge of a plastic light switch cover. After we left the emergency room, Loren took me to a seedy bar in a weird part of Tulsa to show me how to hustle pool.I woke up last night feeling that I had allowed the merely urgent to displace the truly important. I Googled “Loren Ladic Lewis” and saw his obituary.My big brother died on June 20th of last year and no one told me.What’s even worse is that in the 16 months that have come and gone since he died, I was always too busy to call either of the numbers I have known by heart for the past 48 years. What was I doing 17 months ago that was so desperately important?Is there a person you love that you haven’t called in a while?Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis.Roy H. Williams

In America, “generosity” implies an openhanded sharing of material resources.A restaurant can serve generous portions.A donor can be generous with their money.A friend can be generous with their pickup truck, their lawnmower, or their cabin at the lake.While some people are generous with their money; others are generous with their time. They will drive you to the airport, feed your pet while you’re away, and help you pack your stuff, load the truck, and move you to a better place.Are you more generous with your money or with your time?Those who are generous with their money are known as givers or donors or philanthropists. And those who are generous with their time are known as helpers or volunteers. But we have no special name for people who are generous with their encouragement, because those people are extremely rare.What is encouragement, exactly, and why is it so rare?The prefix en was extracted from Latin and came to us through the French. When it precedes a noun, en means to include, allow, or cause to happen. So when you encourage someone, you cause courage to happen within them. You give them a gift they can carry bravely into their future. You make them less afraid.Generic encouragement is as obvious and awkward as flattery. “You’re a winner!” “You can do it!” “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”To truly encourage a person, you must speak to an ability, a talent, or a special sensitivity they possess. When you privately tell a person about something special you see in them – something that they, too, know is there – you give them courage and confidence.“I’ve noticed that you see connections and relationships between things that most people never notice. I think this may be one of your superpowers.”“I’ve noticed that you can always tell when someone doesn’t feel included, and then you make them feel like they are part of the group. I really admire this about you.”“I’ve noticed that when everyone else is making excuses, you are the one who steps up and does what needs to be done. The world needs more people like you.”To see the good things that hide within a person, you need only to pay attention.Attention is high-denomination currencyin any transaction between two people.Attention is something you payand insight is what you can buy with it.If you want to have insight into a person’s hopes and dreams,you need only to pay attention.I know you. You want to empower people. You want to give them courage and confidence to face the future with a smile. You want to help them be stronger and happier.How do I know this about you?By choosing to read these memos I write, you are showing me a little of what is inside you. I tell you this so you will know I am not flattering you when I say that I know you want to give that little jolt-of-joy and spark-of-life to the people you care about.So the next time you’re with someone that matters to you,talk less and listen more,pay attention to their actions,and when you notice something they are good at,tell them what you have noticed they are good at.Everyone else who knows them will forever be giving them advice.Be that rare and special person who gives them honest encouragement and loyal support.Aroo,Roy H. Williams

Did you know that mood and mode share the same root word?1I point this out because you cannot take your customer where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are. And where they are is in one of two different moods, or modes of shopping: transactional mode and relational mode.Each of us operates in both modes, but we tend to choose our mode according to the category. If the category in question is one which you (1.) have an interest, (2.) have no preferred provider, and (3.) are willing to spend time to save money, you will approach that purchase in transactional mode.If the category in question is one which you (1.) have no interest, (2.) have a name in mind that you feel good about2, and (3.) are willing to spend money to save time, you will approach that purchase in relational mode.A customer in relational modeThinks long term.Considers today’s transaction to be one in a series of many.Does not enjoy comparison shopping or negotiating.Fears only “making a poor choice.”Hopes to find an expert they can trust.Is willing to spend money to save time.Desires a long-term solution provider.Is likely to become a repeat customer.A customer in transactional modeThinks short term.Considers today’s transaction to be the end of the relationship.Enjoys the process of shopping and negotiating.Fears only “paying more than they had to pay.”Considers themself to be the expert.Is willing to spend time to save money.Desires a lower price.Is a good source of word-of-mouth advertising.Relational customers are High CAP:High ConversionHigh Average SaleHigh Profit MarginTransactional customers are Low CAP:Low ConversionLow Average SaleLow Profit MarginWhen you target High CAP customers in Relational Mode, you face these dangers.You must create a company culture that causes your employees to take pride in delivering the experience that is expected by the customer in relational shopping mode.If you disappoint the relational customer, they take it as a personal betrayal. You were their trusted provider and you let them down.When you target Low CAP customers in Transactional Mode, you face these dangers:Transactional customers have no loyalty to you. Your relationship ends when the transaction is complete.Transactional customers who are attracted to you for reasons of price alone will abandon you for the same reason.There is nothing that someone else cannot do a little worse and sell a little cheaper. This is why no business is secure when it targets customers in transactional shopping mode.The words you use in your ads send signals to your customers. Do your word choices appeal to customers in relational mode, or do they speak to customers in transactional mode?Give it some thought, because it really is a big deal.Roy H. Williams1 Latin modus “measure, extent, quantity; proper measure, rhythm, song; a way, manner, fashion, style,” from a Proto-Indo-European root med “take appropriate measures.”2 When you “feel good about a name,” it is because you have repeatedly heard good things about that company though advertising or word-of-mouth.My friend Bill Bergh taught me about Transactional and Relational modes of decision making when he sketched it on a paper placemat in an Irish pub in Calgary more than 20 years ago and Wizard of Ads partner Ryan Chute showed me some amazing High CAP/Low CAP data just 2 weeks ago. Thanks, Bill and Ryan! – RHW

“I did all the right things. I touched all the bases in exactly the right order and I was highly rewarded for it. If you had done what I did, you would have been rewarded, too.”Abel didn’t say it, but Cain heard it. And in his rage, Cain sent his brother to the other side of that open door through which we all must exit.Do you remember the Nashville man who blew himself up inside his motorhome in front of the telephone building on Christmas morning? The final report released by the FBI said, “Anthony Quinn Warner chose the location and timing so that the explosion would be impactful while still minimizing the likelihood of undue injury.” And it went on to say that Warner was driven in part by, “the loss of stabilizing anchors and deteriorating interpersonal relationships.”When otherwise normal people become violent and begin killing random strangers, we usually dismiss them as “crazy and evil” and that’s the end of our discussion.Jordan B. Peterson1 says,“We make our sacrifices in the present, and we assume that by doing so, the benevolence of the world will be manifested to us. That’s why we’re willing to forego gratification and to work. In doing these things, we sacrifice.”“So Cain sacrifices, but God rejects his sacrifice. And that ancient story is brilliantly ambivalent about why you can work diligently and make the proper sacrifices and yet fail, which means that despite all that work and all that foregone gratification, an implicit covenant has been broken. And Cain responds to that with tremendous anger. He raises his fist against the sky and shakes it and says, ‘This should not be!’ And then he takes revenge. He says, ‘I will destroy what is most valuable to you.'”“So he goes after Abel, who is an ideal person whose sacrifices are welcomed by God and he kills him. And then all hell breaks loose in the aftermath. The more I delved into that story, the more it shocked me. I couldn’t believe that much information could be packed into what’s essentially 12 lines.”“We see the suffering and the horror of our lives, the vulnerability and the mortality of everything that we love and cherish, and we see our failure, and that turns us against being. But there is another part of us that maintains faith and strives forward.”A great many people have quietly spoken to me about the unfairness of their lives. And each of them had a valid point. If we lived in an organized universe where hard work and good intentions were always rewarded, and laziness and dishonest manipulation were always punished, the list of winners and losers in this life would look radically different.This idea of winners and losers becomes particularly thorny when you throw God into the mix. Kate Bowler writes,“Blessed is a loaded term because it blurs the distinction between two very different categories: gift and reward. It can be a term of pure gratitude. ‘Thank you, God. I could not have secured this for myself.’ But it can also imply that it was deserved. ‘Thank you, me. For being the kind of person who gets it right.’ It is a perfect word for an American society that says it believes the American dream is based on hard work, not luck.”Twenty years ago, David Brooks wrote a book called Bobos in Paradise, and then a few weeks ago he wrote an update called, How the Bobos Broke America. The following is from that update.“The Bobos didn’t necessarily come from money, and they were proud of that; they had secured their places in selective universities and in the job market through drive and intelligence exhibited from an early age, they believed. They were – as the classic Apple commercial had it – ‘the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.’ But by 2000, the information economy and the tech boom were showering the highly educated with cash. They had to find ways of spending their gobs of money while showing they didn’t care for material things. So they developed an elaborate code of financial correctness to display their superior sensibility. Spending lots of money on any room formerly used by the servants was socially defensible: A $7,000 crystal chandelier in the living room was vulgar, but a $10,000, 59-inch AGA stove in the kitchen was acceptable, a sign of your foodie expertise. When it came to aesthetics, smoothness was artificial, but texture was authentic. The new elite distressed their furniture, used refurbished factory floorboards in their great rooms, and wore nubby sweaters made by formerly oppressed peoples from Peru.”“‘The educated class is in no danger of becoming a self-contained caste,’ I wrote in 2000. ‘Anybody with the right degree, job, and cultural competencies can join.’ That turned out to be one of the most naive sentences I have ever written.”An enormous number of people are angry about injustice today. They feel that they are doing the right things and obeying the rules, but the rewards are being handed to someone else.I see this to my left and to my right.Jordan B. Peterson concludes his discussion of Cain and Abel by saying,“I ended my last book with a chapter, Be Grateful in Spite of Your Suffering, I put it at the end as the culmination, the final moral rule. Because that’s the antidote to Cain, and I take Cain’s argument seriously: ‘Are things so terrible that they shouldn’t exist at all?’ You can accrue a fair bit of evidence in favor of that hypothesis. But it doesn’t lead to the right place; it makes everything worse as far as I can tell. I haven’t encountered a situation where gratitude wasn’t better than its alternative. Resentment is the opposite of gratitude, and it is unbelievably destructive.”My friend Richard Exley taught me 40 years ago to “celebrate the ordinary.” It was some of the most wonderful advice I have ever been given.Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.Joy is a function of gratitude — and gratitude is a function of perspective.I say to the unhappy people I love, “Change your perspective. Or, you can remain angry, frustrated, and outraged; I will not say that you are wrong, or that your outrage is misplaced. I will say only that you are likely to remain unhappy.”This has been a longer-than-usual memo and you, good friend, have stayed with me until the end! Allow me now to show my appreciation by giving you this benediction:My deepest hope for you today is that you will be able to experience gratitude and joy for the tiniest of reasons. I want you to have hair-trigger happiness, the kind that leaps onto your lap like an excited puppy. May you be quick with your encouragements and slow with your corrections, and may you discover the wondrous gift of being able to celebrate the ordinary.Roy H. Williams